HAIR TEST.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20477, 1 December 1934, Page 33 (Supplement)

HAIR TEST.

SCIENTISTS’ CLAIM. If arsenic is fpund in the hair and nails of a dead person, can it be proved that the poison was administered during life? The answer has an important bearing on murder cases—and Dr. Sydney Smith and , Mr. E. B. Hendry, of the university of Edinburgh, claim to have found it. Writing in the “British Medical Journal,” they state that arsenic absorbed into the hair during life cannot be removed by prolonged soaking. This, they suggest, 1 might be a basis for distinguishing between arerenic administered during life and arsenic introduced into a body by water percoiating through arsenic-containing soil. The presence and distribution of arsenic in the hair, nails and skin, state the doctors, has been of major significance in many cases. They mention the Seddon and Hearn cases, in which “from similar facts we have opposite deductions made on behalf of the Crown, both to the disadvantage of the accused.” Another important discovery is that if arsenic has been absorbed over a short period into growing hair or nails from living body fluids, the distribution will not be even. As the hair grows, an arseniccontaining band grows with it, followed by an arsenic-free zone. Over a long period of administration, however, more and more of the hair contains arsenic, till the poison becomes evenly distributed. Evenly distributed arsenic in the hair, however, may also be caused by absorption from outside.